review your uninsured coverage and wear your seatbelt

Yet many people drive without insurance. Unfortunately DMV doesn't verify your coverage. People use fake cards or just buy a month of bare minimum insurance.

They don't require proof when you renew your registration either.

although it wasn't nearly as tragic as the OP, my friend was recently a victim of the "driver at fault wasn't an authorized driver" excuse when his car was side-swiped by another driver who was driving his aunt's car. since both cars were insured through Progressive, i figured that was an easy way out for the insurance company. the aunt claims her nephew stole the car and my friend is left with about $700 worth of repairs. it's not really worth a lawsuit to him, so he is left to bite the bullet.

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this message has probably been edited to correct typos, spelling errors and to improve grammar...

"All that is gold does not glitter..."

Absolutely. There is a film called "Room To Live" that is often shown to promote seatbelt useage. It makes belivers out of alot of 'tough' guys.

One of my Owner Operators was involved in a nasty wreck. Elderly couple w/ grandaughter in the back seat pulled out in front of him on a two lane Virginia highway. Swerving to the right he almost missed their auto [no injuries to them!] and returning to the travel lane the load dumped him over onto the driver's side. His seatbelt kept him inside the cab [room to live] and the state wanted to give him an award for wearing his belt. The police said he would not have lived without his belt.

Police did cite the other driver and their insurance paid his damages. Thankfully he did purchase the Occupational Accident insurance we make available, he missed eleven months recovering. 40,000 pounds of plate glass slamming his rig onto the highway messed him up some. Without the belt he would have ended underneath his tractor...

ROOM TO LIVE.

Freightliner shows a film, made in Germany, where two crash test dummies, one belted & one not, get rolled sideways down an incline to simulate a rollover. Around a 15 foot drop, just enough that the truck rolls one time. The scene ends w/ the unbelted dummy being ejected. Truck drivers have a 90% better chance of living if they can stay inside the cab. Takes a seatbelt to do that!

Few years back another driver was sitting in line on the interstate, reduced to one lane due to median mowing. they were just beyond the warrning arrows. Log truck came up and slammed into the back of his empty trailer pushing him into a motorhome and shoving them both off the highway. His tractor hit bottom hard enough to fracture his oil pan before the whole rig ran out into the swamp. The belongings inside his cab [stand-up sleeper] including the closet doors & their contents all beat him up on their way out the windshield at the impact. We had pictures of him looking like he lost a prizefight. Imagine the impact of having him stand up at the next safety meeting and describe the feeling of seeing everything leave his cab thru the windshield, except him due to the seatbelt, and later coming back to see where the truck ran over all the stuff that went out the windshield...

The retired couple in the motor home also had their belts on and were not injured

Seat Belts work!

I guess the first 30 or so years of my life myself and everyone else was dumb and irresponsible including my parents and grandparents. No wonder life made more sense then. People knew that if they crashed they would get hurt, what a concept. They also knew if they couldn't drive good enough they would crash and get hurt, not so dumb after all. Today people wear a seat belt in a car with air bags, anti lock brakes and traction/skid control but have no concept that if they cannot drive good they might crash and get hurt, that's dumb.

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"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence"
Robert Frost

If seatbelts and staying tightly inside the car just take a GOOD look at Nascar~!
They are going close to 200 MPH, crash, flip, roll, you name it. They are SECURE in a 5 Point Seatbelt~! And are able to just walk away from 99% of those crashes. Hardly a scratch at all.
Seat belts, plain and simple, work~!

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YES! Seat belts save lives by keeping you from being ejected from the car. Same thing for children's car seats, too! Properly used car seats keep kids safe - reducing the risk of injuries to infants by something like 72%, down to about 59% reduction for kids 4-8 who are in booster seats.

Using a booster seat for those 4-8 year olds will put the lap portion of the belt in contact with their hips, the shoulder belt portion with their sternum & shoulder (not the neck), the strongest points of a body. A child not in that booster seat has the lap belt in contact with the SOFT ORGANS. Guess what? Ruptured spleens, intestines, & pancreases just don't heal well.

Please Please Please - be a role model - buckle up! Make sure your kids are buckled up in an well fitting, age-weight-height appropriate child passenger safety seat. Read the seat manual and your car owner manual to learn how to install it correctly. You can also call public health, police, or fire departments to help locate a certified child passenger safety technician, or look it up on the web at safekids.org. Most places DON"T charge for this service, either!

And if you live near Iron Mountain, MI, I'll be happy to help you with that seat installation! (True Confession - I'm a CPS techie!)

The firm represents the victim. The other driver did not have a work permit to drive and had several violations already. The owner of the car initially reported to the patrol that she had not given him permission to drive her vehicle (but surveillance tapes at his work place showed he was every day). I made a copy of the first hospital bill for the client. $168k.

I saw "Room to Live" at 16 and have never been unbuckled since. Never is a big word, but in this case it is accurate. Scared the bigeebees out of me. Our cars never move without all clicks being accounted for.

In this case, the seatbelt may not have prevented her injuries. She is a tall lady and her femur was forced into her hip, crushing a lot of bone.

My son had rolled his Toyota truck (no xcab) on an icy highway/median dip, and suffered head and neck trauma because the roof caved in enough on his 6'2" body. The xcab or trucks with in/out rollbars are safer.

In addition to wearing our belts, we probably ought to consider the room inside our vehicles compared to our own size, so we are giving ourselves "Room to Live". I worry about being so short that my body is closer to the steering column than an average crash dummy. I think there should be extensions for the pedals so short folks can sit back a little farther from the wheel.

Check your med insurance for a lifetime cap, too. Can you imagine one event like this taking so much of it? Next the insurance companies will ban together to figure out how to transfer a cap if you change jobs/insurance companies. I don't know, maybe they already do that?

mamagoose

One that I will always remember:
"A seatbelt is more comfortable than a wheelchair."

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Proverbs 22:3 "A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished." KJV www.informedchristians.com

I had a nice purple reminder of my seatbelt for about 3-4 weeks I think it was, after my truck got totalled by an idjit running a stop sign. Across the abdomen and chest.

Could have been loads worse though.

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My mom was 5' 0" and we had a gas pedal unit that from the end looked like an hourglass. the open bottom would clamp onto the gas pedal w/ a screw making it 2" closer so my 6' 2" father could still drive w/ the seat all the way back w/ out banging his knee against the dash. It was enough that w/ the seat up mom's big toe still was on the pedal when pushed all the way down...

Before we found that she had to keep a 2" thick cushion behind her.

her present car has a 60/40 seat & she can reach w/ out it.

Growing up there was an older migit in town drove an old CJ5 w/ extended pedals & gearshifts. No body else could drive it as the pedals were just under the bottom edge of the dash, about 15" from the back of the steering wheel...

Sad to say, one's own safe driving is not enough when someone else's driving is not safe. Buckle up.

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Wise enough to know I'll never be wise enough to know it all